STRAWBERRY BEDS. 



271 



been paid annually into the credit account of 

 the cemeteries of Greenwood, Mount Auburn, 

 or Laurel Hill, would keep up in the very 

 highest condition, (as this garden is kept,) one 

 like it in the neighborhood of any of our cities. 

 And the precincts of the Elysian Fields, near 

 New- York — Brookline, near Boston — on the 

 hanks of the Wissahicon, near Philadelphia, 



would be as fine localities for such subscrip- 

 tion gardens as Regent's Park is for London. 

 If our citizens, who have the money, could 

 come here and see what it will do, expended 

 in this way, I am sure they would not hesi- 

 tate to subscribe the " needful." 



Yours sincerely, A.J. D. 



London, August, 1S50. 



THE WINTER COVERING OF STRAWBERRY BEDS. 



BY WESTCHESTER, N. Y. 



North of New- York, I think no experienced 

 horticulturist will deny that strawberry beds 

 are the better for a covering, to protect them 

 from the severity of winter. It is not the 

 cold, but the alterations of temperature, in 

 winter, which seriously injure strawberry plants 

 in the northern states. For this reason, in 

 those parts of the country at the extreme 

 north — as Maine or Vermont, where the 

 ground is generally well covered with stiow 

 from November to April, — the strawberry is 

 not half so subject to injury as in this part 

 of New- York, or Connecticut, where the win- 

 ters are often mild, and the ground bare, for 

 half or the whole of the winter. 



In clayey soils, the effects of severe freezing 

 and thawing are most injurious ; since in such 

 soils the plants are actually uprooted, or 

 " heaved out," by the action of the frost, so 

 that all the plants, in a healthy and vigorous 

 bed, are not unfrequently killed by this ex- 

 posure of the roots which takes place. There- 

 fore, in such soils, the greater necessity for 

 some sort of covering to prevent this injuri- 

 ous action of the frost. I have uniformly 

 found that when the beds were covered with 

 straw, or litter, a couple of inches deep, the 

 plants in the spring were in fine condition. 

 Sometimes this is the case when no covering 

 is laid upon the plants ; but semetimes, and 



I may say not unfrequently, the plants are 

 wholly killed — and very often, as I am con- 

 vinced from experiments, the crop of the sea- 

 son is half destroyed by the exposure of the 

 plants during winter — even if the plants do 

 not appear to be injured when the spring 

 opens. 



But I did not take up my pen to urge the 

 necessity of protecting strawberry beds in 

 winter, so much as to point out what I think 

 a new and valuable material for this purpose. 



This material is tan7ier''s bark ; a substance 

 easily and cheaply obtained, if the cultivator 

 is in the neighborhood of a tannery, and to 

 be had, in many cases, for the mere trouble 

 of drawing it away, after it has been thrown 

 out of the vats at the tan-yard. 



I have used it now for two winters ; the 

 first winter quite by mistake, — a strawberry 

 bed being covered by mistake, in spreading 

 tan for a new walk. The efiect was so satis- 

 factory, that last winter I did it by design, 

 and in order to satisfy my own mind, co7fi- 

 paratively. That is to say, I covered a cer- 

 tain number of beds with tan, and an equal 

 number along side, and of the same sorts, with 

 straw in the common mode. 



The result was, that the beds covered with 

 tan have been much finer, both in the health 

 of the plants,, and the size and flavor of the 



